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Writing Security

United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity

1998

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Author:

David Campbell

A newly revised edition of this bold and important work.

In this new edition of a groundbreaking work, David Campbell provides a fundamental reappraisal of American foreign policy, with a new epilogue to address current world affairs and the burgeoning focus on culture and identity in the study of international relations.

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Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has faced the challenge of reorienting its foreign policy to address post-Cold War conditions. In this new edition of a groundbreaking work-one of the first to bring critical theory into dialogue with more traditional approaches to international relations-David Campbell provides a fundamental reappraisal of American foreign policy, with a new epilogue to address current world affairs and the burgeoning focus on culture and identity in the study of international relations.

Extending recent debates in international relations, Campbell shows how perceptions of danger and difference work to establish the identity of the United States. He demonstrates how foreign policy, far from being an expression of a given society, constitutes state identity through the interpretation of danger posed by others.

“This is an intriguing book. . . . It not only goes behind foreign policy as such, to look at its domestic roots, but also digs deeply into the very nature of those roots themselves. . . . By moving us beyond, or behind, the usual starting point of foreign policy, this study performs the signal service of inviting us to reflect more deeply on how what we think we are affects how we act in the world.” International Journal

David Campbell is professor of international politics at the University of Newcastle, UK, and the author of National Deconstruction: Violence, Identity, and Justice in Bosnia, also published by the University of Minnesota Press.